Quantification of dairy production research in Argentina during the last 10 years (2012-2021)

The Argentine Association of Animal Production (AAPA), created in 1968, holds an annual conference and publishes a book of abstracts (http://www.aapa.org.ar).

A previous study (Lazzarini et al. 2012), quantified scientific publications of the book of abstracts of AAPA, from 2002 to 2011. They found 1,091 articles related to dairy production from a total of 3,519 articles published.

The objective of this work was to analyze the trend in research areas in animal production, in Argentina, with emphasis on dairy production during the last 10 years (2012-2021). This is a follow-up study from Lazzarini et al. (2012).

We quantified the number of published abstracts in the book of abstract of the AAPA conference from 2012 to 2021 for each of the following sections: reproduction and fertility, production system, animal health, agricultural education, nutrition and feeding, genetics, technology of livestock products, production and use of pastures, other disciplines, fauna, environment and production and animal welfare. Within each section, we quantified the number of articles related to dairy production.

We found 502 articles related to dairy production, which represented 14% of the total publications for the 10-year period analyzed. Figure 1 shows the proportion of each section within dairy production articles.

Table 1 compares the number of articles, related to dairy production, published during the periods 2002-2011 and 2012-2021 for each section. The total number of articles published during the past 10 years (3,579 articles) was similar to the number of articles published in the period 2002-2011 (3,519 articles). The number of articles related to dairy production decreased from 1,091 articles in 2002-2011 to 502 in 2012-2021.

The proportion of articles published in each section remained similar for both periods, except for animal health, nutrition and feeding and production and use of pasture sections.

The book of abstracts showed the following changes: i) in 2010, the agricultural education section was incorporated and ii) in 2019, the animal welfare and environment and production sections were included, given the growing importance, globally, of both topics (Alonso et al. 2020). Before 2019, articles that addressed these issues were presented in other sections.

In 2020, 41 articles were presented in the animal welfare section, 22% of those were related to dairy production. Since the Environment and production section was added in 2019, the number of articles submitted related to dairy production was 23 total articles, which still remains very low.

This review showed that the numbers of articles related to dairy production within the book of abstracts of AAPA was reduced dramatically from the period 2002-2011 to 2012-2021. The inclusion of the animal welfare and environment and production sections highlights the importance that these topics have gained in Argentine research in recent years. Even though the articles published in the proceedings of the AAPA conference are only a sample of the country's scientific research, it could show the trend of research in dairy production in Argentina.